Visiting the horizons of the mine because of the monotony of the deformed environment, coupled with the dwelling of fear and heightened vigilance, can be imprinted by consciousness as an episode entirely devoid of chronology. Time here ceases to flow linearly—it compresses into a dense, almost palpable knot of the present, where every new horizon feels not like the next descent, but like a repetition of the same moment. This state could be called temporal nullification: consciousness refuses to build a narrative, fixing instead only a series of similar, yet progressively deeper, ruptures with the surface.
The mine’s architecture is chaotic and seemingly unpredictable. The sense of the space’s scale, its forms, and the path traversed becomes muddled and loses definition. Tunnels and drifts repeat each other with slight, almost imperceptible deviations, causing the memory to lose track of the body’s precise location. Every new horizon feels simultaneously novel and previously experienced, intensifying the feeling of a closed loop. The fear of encountering something unfamiliar—a condition requiring constant attention to minute details—narrows the field of perception to a few meters ahead, rendering the overall mine space abstract and almost intangible. Ultimately, the descent transforms not into a sequential movement, but into a collection of discrete episodes. Meters cease to be a unit of measurement in the customary sense, serving only as a landmark in sections where depth is indicated.
Exhibition:
‣ professionally printed photographs (full-color print, matte photo paper with a coating mounted on foam core board)
‣ display stand made of sheet material (6 mm OSB)
‣ identification plaques made of metal sheeting
The work was conducted at various levels of the Severouralsk bauxite mine. Two inclined shafts, the active mine working face, as well as excavated and abandoned sections were filmed.
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0 m
Coupler compartment and hermetic door on the inclined shaft bore
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2 m
Monocable suspension road in a sloped shaft
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120 m
Mine working face (pumping station)
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130 m
Mine working face
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600 m
Developed Horizon
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1200 m
Developed Horizon